Page 38 of A Wreck, You Make Me (Bad Boys of Bardstown #3)

Chapter Fourteen

He came prepared.

Even after three weeks, that’s the only thing I can think about.

The fact that he had leather shoes on. He never wears shoes like that, highly polished with a toecap.

He usually has sneakers on if he’s running or working out, and other times he has something resembling big biker boots with thick laces.

I always thought I could fit both my feet in one of his shoes. I always thought I loved his shoes.

Like I loved so many things about him. Like I loved him.

I did, didn’t I? I do . I mean, me realizing it at this point, after years and years of watching him from afar, is a little ridiculous.

It’s obvious that I love him. It’s obvious that I loved him from the first moment I saw him but it’s also so complicated, like everything else about him.

Because watching him from afar is so different than actually getting to know him.

Imagining everything he endured growing up and how he came out of those hardships is so different than meeting the man shaped by those tragedies.

I guess I never took that into account, the effects of those tragedies.

I always admired him so much for his strength, his tenacity that I never really stopped to think what it cost him to be that strong.

Strength always has a price, doesn’t it?

I should know that better than anyone. Being strong chips away at you and it turns you into something different.

In my case, it turned me into someone with no identity outside of my sister, no dreams of my own, no ambitions, just a driving need to protect her.

In his case, he became emotionally handicapped, a toxic viper who bites at the slightest provocation and would do anything for his family.

So no, it’s not obvious that I loved him since the moment I saw him.

Maybe I loved the idea of him, the fairytale of him.

But now I love the man behind it. I love his qualities.

I love his flaws. I love his jagged edges that scrape like teeth and cut like knife.

I love his soft parts too, the parts that took care of me, made me realize I could be worthy of someone’s care too.

The parts that made me feel so safe, safer than I’ve ever felt before.

But that’s not the point. The point is, he came prepared, or rather he came prepared too . In the sense that I had an overnight bag and he had leather shoes with pointed toes. And now every time I see shoes like that, black and leather, I freeze for a second.

I freeze thinking it may be the same shoes. The ones that…

“Hey, you okay?”

I turn away from the coffee machine and toward the voice—Joe’s—and make sure to plaster a smile on my face.

I also make sure to carefully set down the coffee I just made on the counter before plucking a lid from the stack and putting it on.

I slide it over to the take-out counter and call out the name on the label before answering Joe’s question.

“Hey, yeah. Yes, just thinking about stuff.”

I’m at my shift at the coffee shop, but am about to get off in a few minutes. So I start wiping down the counters and putting things back in their places before the next person comes on. I also do it so I don’t have to talk to Joe and lie to him about how fine I am.

He runs his eyes over my features, and once again I make sure to school them and look really busy so he doesn’t detect I’m lying. “Okay. Care to share?”

I throw him a casual shrug. “I’m still trying to convince Snow to look at colleges and she’s still hellbent on not.”

At least it’s the truth. She still hasn’t budged on the whole college thing.

In fact, to argue with me, she printed out brochures for all the dance programs she thought would be perfect for me.

And every time I bring up the topic of her going, she thrusts them toward me with raised eyebrows.

I love my sister but she’s a pain in the ass.

Because every time she shows me these things, she makes me want.

She makes me wish for things that could never be mine. College, options, adventures.

“She doesn’t want to leave her sister,” he says, smiling and thankfully breaking my thoughts. “Can’t fault her for that.”

My response is to give him another smile.

Mostly because a, I know he’s trying to flirt with me and b, these days I can’t help but notice that all he ever does is flirt with me, and instead of looking at my face, his eyes have a tendency of wandering lower, to my chest area.

I don’t know why I never noticed that about him, and now that I do, I can’t stop.

But more than that, it makes me ache in the center of my chest. Because I know why I’ve started to notice these things.

Things like men sometimes look at me longer than necessary, or why sometimes they’re either too nice to me to get me to smile at them, or too rude so they can get a reaction out of me.

I’ve always been so preoccupied with other things—my home life, my sister, trying to make ends meet, and so on—that it never really registered until now.

“Are you sure you don’t want to grab dinner with me tomorrow night?” he asks again, and my heart clenches so hard in my chest that I have to pause from filling the coffee pot with water.

Our date seems so far away now. But after the disaster of our last date, I apologized to him the very next day.

I maintained my lie about my sister calling me and told him we should try to get together again.

At the time, I was doing it out of spite, out of rebellion and anger.

And Joe had agreed. He was relieved that I wanted to give it another try.

But since then, things have changed dramatically—first, for the better and then three weeks ago, for the worse—and I’ve been trying to make excuses to get out of it.

Sometimes I think I should just tell him the truth.

That I’m not interested. I never was. I may have agreed to go out with him, but that was only because I was stuck and was trying to move on.

Ironically. And now, after everything, I’m trying to take my own advice about dealing with the pain and just want to focus on myself.

“Uh, actually, about that,” I begin, thinking why not . “I don’t think it’s a very good idea right now. To go out, I mean. I’m just,” I search for a word or a phrase that would make sense, “trying to deal with some things and I need to focus on myself.”

Joe stares at me carefully. “Is it him?”

My heart thuds. “What?”

He rests his hip against the counter and folds his arms across his chest. “Look, I think you know I like you. I’ve liked you since day one and I was thrilled you wanted to go out with me after all.

But then somehow, things changed. He comes around, first at the restaurant, which I can chalk up to coincidence, and then every day at the coffee shop.

And you’re all prickly one day and blushing the next.

You’re smiling for no reason and then you’re glaring at people for no reason.

And now suddenly, he’s nowhere to be found, when he’d come around pretty much the same time every morning, like clockwork.

And you walk around like a zombie, looking out of it, thinking hard about stuff.

” He dips his face to catch my eyes. “I’m not an idiot.

There’s something going on between you and the famous Wrecking?—”

“Nothing,” I say, cutting him off because I don’t want to listen to him being referred to that way; it hits too close to home, “is going on. Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been the best about sharing my feelings with you.

But you’re my boss and I really need this job, so if we can just forget about the whole dating and dinner thing, it would be great. ”

Joe reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I get it. You don’t have to explain.” Then, squeezing my shoulder again, “But just know, I’ll be here if and when you need me, okay?”

With that, he flicks his gaze down to my chest and I really have to force myself to not wrinkle my nose and step out of his reach.

Thankfully, he lets me go and leaves me to finish the clean-up, and as soon as he’s out of sight, I inevitably turn to the glass door to look beyond.

Toward the empty street. Or rather, the street filled with strangers but empty of the one person I always think is there.

I know it’s crazy to think that. That he could be anywhere near me after what happened, but it’s this stupid tingling on the back of my neck. I get it randomly these days, like someone is watching. Like he is watching, but every time I turn to look, there’s no one there.

I go back to focusing on the job, and ten minutes later I’m clocking out and catching the bus back home.

Which still feels weird because usually, after the coffee shop, I’d be walking to the strip club to start my shift.

Some days, I’d be putting my lipstick on while walking on the sidewalk because I’d be running a little late.

Other days, I’d be massaging my neck or my back from standing up at the shop all day and because I’d have another eight hours of doing the same at the club.

It also feels weird that I have the entire evening free.

And I can actually go home and cook dinner for me and Snow and not just rely on PB&J or ramen.

I can actually hang out with my sister too, instead of just checking in over the phone.